


Mellow In Softness

by UnregisteredCookie



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief suicidal ideation, But He's Working On That Too, But he's working on that, Character Study, Dehumanization, Depression, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, Gen, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Major Character Injury, Other, Post-Embrace the Void Ending (Hollow Knight), Redemption, The Pale King Redemption (Hollow Knight), The Pale King is a Bad Parent (Hollow Knight), because I say so, everybody lives except lurien's butler apparently i'm SO sorry lurien sweetie, herrah is not happy she is a good mom and she is pissed at pale king, misgender my kids and i'll come for your kneecaps and yes this does include isaiah, tags will be added as i go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnregisteredCookie/pseuds/UnregisteredCookie
Summary: The Wyrm awoke in the ancient basin.Wyrm did not know why he was in the ancient basin. He also did not know why he was awake. Each question was as confusing as the other, equally unanswerable.What he did know was that he was awake, he was bleeding, and something must have happened that pulled him from the dream.And he needed to check on the Pure Vessel.
Comments: 96
Kudos: 146





	1. The Pain of Waking Slowly

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Refuse and Regret](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121682) by [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/pseuds/ClockworkRainbow). 
  * Inspired by [Say It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26342050) by [thebooklord15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebooklord15/pseuds/thebooklord15). 



> I'm going to keep it real with you all--I have no idea what I'm doing. I read 'Refuse and Regret'/'Refuse for Resolve' by ClockworkRainbow and 'Say It' by thebooklord15 and am incredibly intrigued by the idea of Pale King dealing with the aftermath of his shitty behavior. That said, this as a concept has been something I've been struggling with for a good while, so please bear with me. I haven't worked on a serious multi-chapter fanfic with little-to-know idea what I'm going for since I was 14.
> 
> Comments and criticism are ALWAYS appreciated!

It was dark when Wyrm opened his eyes.

In hindsight, he wasn’t exactly certain what he expected to see—only that the unidentifiable period between consciousness and awakening had been filled with a lack of presence. There was a distant chill in the air that burned when he breathed, a pounding temple that beat in time with the pace of his thoughts. No less than four failed attempts at meditation, three unglimpsed attempts at foresight, and half a dozen frozen limbs that refused to move. But it was the cold that itched his chitin, the ground he lay on, the frozen-burnt air and the thudding in his head that assured him: He wasn’t dead.

Still. The yawning dark was no less disarming. Even if he could eventually collect himself to recognize the ancient basin for what it was, it was less by sight and more the salty tang in the shivering air.

For a while more, Wyrm merely breathed. Perhaps years later, Wyrm moved.

Claws ached, joints creaked. Arms trembled with the effort to hold his meager weight, struggled to parse through the pins and needles that stemmed from a long, long time of unmoving. The darkness eased, and light illuminated the palace grounds, though recognition spoiled as an empty, sharp cavern greeted him instead. His final resting place, prepared so meticulously, was now a tomb devoid of everything except its single now-living occupant.

_And yet…_

And yet the anchor was still there, resting against the decrepit archway that once served the palace entrance. Within its metallic shell—now dulled to the point that it looked more like mere steel—the blackened form slumped, void tendrils buried into the ground beneath it. It looked eerily like a corpse.

Of all to remain within reality, master and servant were all to survive.

If he thought about it too much, he might have found parallel between the missing castle and the certain death of Hallownest. Despite efforts of preservation by any means necessary short of a mass genocide, everything was doomed to rot.

(Perhaps not genocide, but tens of thousands of bodies sealed beneath him was a far cry from innocence. Infanticide was probably much worse than anything he previously thought himself capable of.)

(…Do not think, Wyrm.)

Wyrm breathed, Wyrm stilled, and Wyrm moved.

The figure that once fashioned himself a king didn’t move much before he realized that something was terribly wrong.

There was blood on his claws when he looked down. Blood that for all intents and purposes seemed to suck the darkness and the shadow from itself and shone with pale purity, flowing with soul, and it wasn’t just on his claws, but on the front of his robes, as well. Robes that were torn cleanly through—and if he shifted them around and looked beneath, pale and glowing chitin was cracked cleanly, too. Clean enough that Wyrm bled now.

His blood was on his claws, and it was finally clear to him why it was his chest burnt so horribly.

In times such as this, dignity was a scarce concern. Claws tangled within the fabric of his robe, one pair of arms holding it firm while another tore clean through. Blood moistened the fabric as he bound it over his chest, limbs tingling and stiff and slow, claws fumbling as he tied loose ends together. It wasn’t pretty—but no one was around to watch, to judge, and nothing about this situation begged for his dignity to remain preserved. A shoddy patchwork job was the least of his concerns, just as unimportant as preserving his wounded pride.

Wyrm moved slowly to his feet, stifling the bloodflow beneath his claws, leaning heavily against the arch. The world swayed, tilted to one side, began to spin and teetered to the other. The edges of his vision was faded, shapes formerly fairly defined blurring indistinguishably. He blinked—once, twice, clenched his eyes shut and re-evaluated himself. Tried—and regrettably failed—to remember how he got here.

What he _did_ remember was the wall. The eggshell texture, the pale perfection, the cracks that formed as he stared, and stared, and stared. The bustling vines of his Lady’s plants, twining majestic and silver and lush as it always did through their palace. His royal retainers, who would have adhered to his every want and wish, heart so fondly devoted, bowing before his regality as he strode past them to sit upon his throne. His knights, knelt and loyal and in a line, so foolishly trusting and blind, their backs to the wall.

The wall. Pale and darkening, darkening. It hadn’t been that dark before, had it? …Had it?

He tightened his grip. One hand tightened around the arch, and the other tightened around his forehead. He didn’t remember pressing it to his forehead. He opened his eyes, squinting, and the wall and its cracks faded into the torn hem of his robes, and he thought: _Oh_. And nothing more, for a while.

Realization was dawning. He was in the ancient basin. Awake. Awake, and awoken from the place he called exile, where he planned to hibernate until his death was certain and spurred by forgotten memory. Awake, and alone—alone… except for the decommissioned Kingsmould (he eyed it now, shifting back, as if it might spring suddenly to its feet and strike at him, and he immediately regretted it—) and the strange injury drawn across his chest. And an empty space where the White Palace once stood behind him.

Something… something— _something_ had drawn him out from that dream, he reasoned—and deduced, very belatedly, that it couldn’t have been Her. She was not the sort to chance a mortal enemy’s escape—at least, She didn’t _strike_ him as the sort—and if She were anything like what _he_ used to be, She’d have burnt him alive with Her light Herself. Besides, She couldn’t possibly reach him _here_ , not after all this time—

Time… oh. How long had it been since he disappeared?

Wyrm strained, stumbled, feet pattering and stumbling towards the Kingsmould, and he knelt, eyes scouring over the formerly luminous armor. After a few moments of silence (a few moments in this uncertain eternity), he reckoned—it may… _may_ have been a century. Maybe half. The pale armor used for sealing void away was tarnished, faintly rusted, and that came with a fair degree of time that was a blink for a god but a history for a kingdom. The void construct didn’t move, a distinct failure in the war against the test of time. As anything else.

(Was the Pure Vessel still inside the temple, chained and bound just as She was chained and bound to it? Did it survive all that time, or was it also a project that was doomed to be obsolete? Did it—)

(— _They_ , Wyrm reminded himself, as he had many, many times before. _Do_ they _despise it?_ )

…It couldn’t have been Her. It _couldn’t_ have been Her. And if it were void, he may have seen a similar but polarizing fate. Wyrm knelt, and breathed, and once the world finally— _finally_ stopped swirling and stabilized, he looked down at his hands…

_…Oh._

Wyrm was silent for much longer, voice further lost in unknowing contemplation, and when the wall flashed behind his eyelids once again, his hands were shaking.

Once upon a time, an eternity ago, he had been the Pale Wyrm, sailing across the skies of the endless wastelands, the salty tang of what he knew to have once been the sea and _remembered_ to be the sea and could see as something much, _much more_ coasting the fringes of his endless foresight. Once, he was the Pale King, an idol, a leader, a gifter of opportunity and choice, and now, he was… something else entirely. Something lesser. Someone who dabbled in matters far beyond his comprehension or control—far beyond his _understanding_.

Long ago, he felt like that lack of understanding was something he _should_ have known. Now, now… now he didn’t think he was ever meant to. That he never would.

It was a shame he had to be exposed to its poison so long to learn. It was a shame it tattooed itself across his hands, climbed up his arms, made its presence known.

(The void, he had thought, hadn’t been alive. Never would be, never could be. It was perfect. But again and again, he was proven wrong, and more and more children were cast away, and he was desperate and denying or maybe he was far, far too hopeful that he was wrong but when it climbed to the top and proved what was wrong was right he believed it but time and time again what was right was wrong and it—)

**_(They.)_ **

Wyrm paused, claws half-lifted to brush away imaginary dust from the Kingsmould’s shoulder, and it almost could have been theirs.

Wyrm breathed. It was easier now, the breathing. That didn’t mean it was painless. It was definitely easier to see, though, and growing less painful the more and more he was awake, and what he saw was the slumping Kingsmould that once acted as the anchor to the White Palace. He’d casted it out purposefully all that time ago, cast it like a net. It drifted somewhere in that realm of dreams in a place so untouchable by Her waters, anchored and connected by what She feared. Wherever it was, it drifted freely in the ocean now, the rope cut, and somehow he was beached back where he started. Perhaps as a blessing or as a curse.

He leaned back, straightened, attempted some semblance of dignity. Something other than a breath left him.

“Rise,” he whispered—and he was shamed to admit that it was much too soft to even be a whisper. But at least it was a word, a voice—he could speak still, although his voice cracked and creaked, disused and uncomfortable. It was a pale echo of what it once was in the past, an undefined echo in itself. 

As expected, the construct did not move. It continued wearing the façade of a corpse in spite of being addressed. Wyrm coughed. He tasted hemolymph in the back of his throat. There was silence, the noise that came with clearing a throat, a thick, difficult swallow. “Awaken.”

The body jolted suddenly—Wyrm fell back, stumbling, manifesting a spell on the tip of his tongue, soul a syllable away from escape. The corpse that was not a corpse pulsed, shivered like some abstract form, and then

Stared right back at him.

Wyrm stared it in the eye, and he did not move. His vision was swimming again, distorting eyes, armor, void into a disorganized mess that he could barely make out. The spell of nails illuminated everything further, enough to the point that it actually _hurt_ , and the longer he murmured the syllables under his breath and focused his soul, the harder it was to focus. Everything was fragmenting. Everything was falling apart.

But nothing happened, and the construct did not stand.

Hesitantly, he dismissed the spell. The shift was immediate—a brief pressure in his head, a rattling in his breath, but the fringes of his vision began to clear and refocus.

The thin white eyes were locked on him as its pale armor shivered and settled. If he knew no better, he might have thought it was appraising him as much as he was appraising _it_.

Soul hummed against the tips of his claws, pulled and worn worryingly thin—thin enough that after a few moments, Wyrm hissed, stepped away further, pressed his body against the archway. The Kingsmould stared forward as the spell’s strength dissolved, and Wyrm was weak.

Yet he was careful—at least for now, at least until he could figure out what drew him back—and there was no telling if the Kingsmould, after all of these years, still retained the memory of the armor’s spell of servitude. Caution was a necessity—albeit not one the former king could fully devote to.

When it didn’t stand to its feet as it could have—when it didn’t host its deadly sickle—only then did he allow himself a strangled breath of relief. The breath didn’t come any easier than the ones before, but with the Kingsmould staring him down with those familiarly vacant eyes… of all things, it was almost— _almost_ a comfort.

There was always a part of him that feared that nothing essence. However long ago it was that he slept, the him back then would never have admitted such a thing to anyone--least of all himself. But Wyrm was tired, and he was drained, and he couldn't find it within himself to muster the energy to combat these treacherous thoughts. So it was almost a comfort--but not quite there. Not quite.

He sank to the ground, stifling his restlessness, and was reminded--once again--of his fleeting immortality. A creature that could bleed was a creature that could die, and blood flowed thickly from him now, flowing so thick from his chest that his front was all but soaked. He needed to...

Focus. Think, Wyrm, and focus.

Whatever it was that called him here, he was returned for a reason. And something must have (knowingly) brought him back from the stranded dream, else he suspected assembling all the essence that was there to be utterly impossible.

He'd been close to death. So horribly close to death, and yet it was robbed away from him.

What drew him to stay, then? What dragged him away from his grave?

The Kingsmould stared unmoving at the Wyrm. If it were going to attack him, it would have done so by now--and Wyrm felt ultimately foolish for conceiving such a thought, when such an encounter never happened prior. Endless hours of testing and experimentation never once gave birth to a void entity that, once under his influence and sealed in its shell, went out of its way to attack.

Wyrm knew this, yet still the molded knight's awakening left the worrisome itch of soul tingling within his claws.

Left the whole of his being weary and exhausted as his body shivered with empty soul. And once more, he knew that even if he wished to use his soul magic--for now, it would be impossible until he could intake enough soul to recover from his damages.

There was no foresight available to him, then. No magic until the first of his priorities--assuring his own safety--were met.

"Molded knight," Wyrm rasped out. "Hunt for me a crawler."

The knight stood, taking its scythe in its hand, and Wyrm refused to acknowledge the fluttering of his heart as it marched mechanically past, heading in the direction of the ancient basin at large.

And once again, Wyrm was alone.


	2. Something That Cracks, Pulls and Splinters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wyrm attempts to grasp for something to base his next actions on, and in the process aggravates his injuries in a harrowing way.

Never before in his life was the sound of silence so deafening.

There was the silence that came after the crash, interrupted solely by howling winds and the sound of cracking egg.

There was the silence of awe, the silence of worship, and the ensuing silence of dread as King became aware of a God still breathing, a God still raging and burning with bitter anger. The silence of his workshop as he worked the voidmatter, alone, weaving spells from pale metal, words, and soul. Somehow even that silence hadn't been so bad, in retrospect--there was purpose and goal as he worked fervently, metal and bolts dancing between claws and artificial shell.

The silence as he knelt before his Lady and begged. The silence when she said yes. The silence as their progeny…

...The silence as he waited by the abyss, waiting for something to claw its way to him. The silence as he took the first that made it. The silence as it (they) were sealed away. The hopeful silence that followed.

Horribly short. Horribly brief.

The silence of shame. The silence of staring at that wall. The silence that was interrupted by failure upon failure playing on endless repeat over and over in his mind.

The silence of surrender. The silence of death.

Ironically, the truest silence to persist.

Every eternal moment of silence since he became king was a silence worse than the last.

This was a new kind of silence. It was the quietest, the longest, the hardest by far. The silence of awakening.

Ironically, somehow, it was easier.

* * *

Wyrm reclined his posture against the arch, pressing the back of his head against the stone architecture. Above him, all around him, beyond the reach of his flickering light, the ancient basin stretched endlessly, hollow and yawning like the stomach of some ancient beast. But the real stomach, he knew, lay even deeper below, where the depths of the receded sea swam thick with salty ichor and busted oil veins beneath the surface and something else far more ancient and unknown buried deeper still.

They were salty, watery dregs, so thick as to sound of nothing and feel of nothing. And yet that silence would surely have been the most maddening of them all, quiet and endless and still. Perhaps--if he truly sought his own end--perhaps he should have launched himself into the belly of the beast with his kin instead of reclining upon his throne like the privileged cringer he was.

_...No excuses. No excuses, Wyrm. _

It was time to address the issues at hand.

Thousands of vessels beneath him. There was no telling if any would still be living today, or if they would be mere ghosts of what they could have been--shades, as someone he once knew had murmured. He wasn't in any condition to see for himself, and even if he could descend, there was no guarantee he would be able to return.

With a brief spark of realization, his claws moved, sparks of pain flaring through his shell as he reached over his shoulder and fleetingly fumbled at his back. He breathed a cold sigh, arm going slack. That's right.

That would serve to complicate everything.

...Unless, by some miracle, the stagways were still operational. But if he'd been asleep as long as he assumed, the likelihood of such a thing was all but impossible, certainly not something to be immediately reliant upon. Wyrm turned his head down toward the nearby stag station, quietly regarding the approach to the highways of Hallownest, distantly recalling the order to seal it secure when he retired to his throne for good, and…

Ah, the wall had crumbled. Likely against the test of time, but that reminded him very suddenly that the ascent to the palace from the rest of the ancient basin had also very much been destroyed by his order. Wyrm turned his head to peer that way across the bridge now--it stretched so much farther down that the farthest fringe of his weakened light couldn't reach the end. The trek looked to be endless, and the fall at the end would no doubt be painful.

...The fall at the end, with no way to climb back up.

Wyrm winced.

Painful, yes. But likely very necessary.

Wyrm looked away, turning his gaze now skyward, and he considered the Black Egg, the Dreamers, the Pure--

_ My child. _

He couldn't see anything from where he was, drained and secluded he may have been. Foresight was a spell whose cost he hadn't the reserves for, and it was more important to guarantee his personal safety for the future than it was to extend his vision unnecessarily. As necessary as it may actually be.

The closest Dreamer was Lurien the Watcher.

He needed to move.

* * *

It was hard at first.

Decades of stiffness remained resolute between the joints of his legs, uncertain and numb and ultimately refusing to move in certain places. Very quickly he found he had to stop--focus for a moment on working out the tension, struggling to get them to function properly. And when that didn't work, Wyrm attempted to focus the last of his soul, pushing it out and pulling it back within himself.

Then came the nausea, the aching fatigue, the emptiness of being all but devoid of soul. His body was well-adapted to absorb that energy from the latent air, but other than the soul totems scattered haphazardly around the ancient basin, it was scarce here. And he was running on empty, his attempt to recover from his aches unquestionably wasted.

Wyrm blinked a few times, wrapping his arms across his chest, easing the tilting blurriness seeping from the corners of his vision.

From then on, walking was only easier by way of practice. Like his strained breaths, it was still a struggle, every wrong movement aggravating the gash carved deep into his chest. Drained entirely of soul, his vision was horribly limited, kingslight failing to illuminate far enough for him to see his destination--and when he paused for a moment and looked back, he couldn't see where he came from, either.

He didn't remember the ancient basin being this dark.

It felt like forever before he reached the dreaded drop, and when he peered down, he saw his suspicions confirmed. The molded knight stood stock-still beneath him, armor shimmering dimly, the corpse of a still-twitching crawler deposited by its side. The knight straightened suddenly, stood to attention, planted its feet into the ground. Stood to attention.

His chest was heaving by this point, the dizziness and exhaustion returning tenfold, and he pressed his claws against the source, well aware of hemolymph climbing the back of his throat and the pit of his stomach. He knelt down by the edge, and Wyrm hesitated for a moment.

A moment became two.

"Help me down," he finally managed.

The Kingsmould moved accordingly, dropping its weapon unceremoniously to the ground as it stepped forward. It refused to move until Wyrm heaved a shaking breath and turned his back toward it, making an attempt to dig his claws into the stone and lower himself down--at least a little. The less of a fall there was to have, the less chance of injury he had to worry about. 

Claws secure, legs beginning to lower. He didn't see so much as hear the rustling of its armor beneath him. One step at a time.

Stomach pressed to the edge. His arms were shaking. His chest--

Something slipped. Something else cracked.

Something else _(--not a Wyrm, surely not a Wyrm--)_ breathed a harsh, half-stifled yell.

And Wyrm fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so horribly tempted to apologize for these chapters being so short... but when I look at my one old, special Kirby fanfic from eons ago and realize it was literally 16+ pages per chapter, I think you lot should thank your lucky stars that I'm not writing this when I was in Middle School. Ah, fun times, fun times.


	3. A Noise That Sounds Like Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyrm has a very difficult growing moment, and a new participant receives a nasty shock.

Wyrm knew he was dreaming the moment he opened his eyes. Or maybe a more accurate sentiment would be calling it a nightmare.

When he fell to the earth as a Wyrm generations ago, it was to a cataclysmic effect. The air pulled at the length of their body, and they struck the stone-hard dirt and dug in deep. The earth shook, shuddered, quaking with the sudden displacement of Wyrm instinct, and once the tunnels were wide enough to guarantee an easy passage for their molt, Wyrm sat still and waited until death. It was a quiet time--they could hear the howling of the wind, make out a song from the roots and the hollowed stone. When the Pale King clawed his way out, the song stayed with him, buried deep into the root of his being.

This was not that fall.

This was the fall that came after trying to cling to the edge. There was a pale light before him, but he didn't care enough to see its source--he already knew. 

He already knew.

The metal was smooth--his claws strained, shook, slipped--and he was falling away from himself, away from that light and into the yawning pit of darkness beneath him. And he kept on falling in that slow and weightless way, stomach twisting in knots and limbs prickling with nervous adrenaline. The light grew distant. He saw something else fall after him. Heard something hit the ground beneath him.

He hit some stray platform before he hit the bottom. Something under him cracked, and something inside of him cracked even harder, leaving him gasping for air even as everything began to fade.

He didn't hear anything land beside him. But distantly, he became aware of something standing over him. Something with dark eyes made of voidmatter, something also somehow pallid, and it almost would have looked like the Pure Vessel if it weren't for the shape of its horns. Wyrm tried to breathe--the inside of everything hurt beyond words fit to describe, like he was standing in the middle of a stagway intersection and let himself be trampled by twenty in a minute. Except--somehow--worse.

The vessel was gone before he knew it. Wyrm wished he could have reached out and touched it.

 _Them_.

But no. It was all but a dream.

He knew it was a dream from the moment he opened his eyes.

* * *

The first thing Wyrm thought when he awoke was that he was very tired and wanted very much to go back to sleep. The second was that he was in a lot of pain, and the third was he was freezing.

The fourth was that he was in a _lot_ of pain, actually, and the fifth was he _couldn't_ let himself fall back asleep if he wanted to deal with that without dying first.

Breathing was harder than it was before--the rise and fall of his chest sparked new waves that throbbed and ached indiscriminately. Wyrm's head was swimming, but nonetheless, he made an effort to sit himself up, spiderwebs of pain tightening around his stomach. If he could taste hemolymph before, he could feel it forming solidly now in the back of his throat.

Wyrm glanced around, looked behind him--pulled himself back against the closest wall, arms shaking. The pain stoked wave after wave through his shell, aching exhaustion causing sparks to dance in his vision. The Kingsmould stood stock-still a ways away, crawler laying motionless beside it. Looking up showed the pathway to where the Palace once stood above, which meant the only way forward from here was what lay in front of him. 

He refused to think too much about the state of his attire, even as he tore more of his robe to workable pieces--his right side stung horribly beneath the bandages, and it needed a fresh change anyway.

Again, _this was not the time for pride._

Void-stained claws tore at the makeshift wrappings, and he peeled them away, looking down at himself. There was a sigh, made of equal parts by exhaustion and frustration--although the majority of his glowing life's blood had dried by now, fresh silver ichor oozed between the scabs, and it itched. And the cracking had expanded, blossomed across his shell and wept fresh along his right side, curving beneath one of his arms. 

He pressed his claws against it. The voidmatter within them itched, too, tingling with coldness against his clawtips. The voidmatter in his claws pressed against his shell, impossible to hide and even harder to look away from. The void was looking down at him from his own face, and if it felt anything, he couldn't see it, or maybe the truth was that he didn't want to.

The face of the Pure Vessel's sibling… ah. He remembered it.

How could he ever forget?

Something deep within him shattered and broke, and Wyrm was suddenly aware that he was trembling as a heat--wet and watery and heavier than anything in all of Hallownest--somehow found its way trailing down the curve of his face. His vision wobbled unsteadily, shapes morphing together, black and white until all he could see was the vaguest outline of his hand. For a moment, he thought he was losing consciousness again.

And then there was another.

And another.

And suddenly he remembered the monument.

Somewhere in the center of the City of Tears (whose true name he couldn't currently remember), there stood a monument, carefully and lovingly commissioned from the greatest sculptor he could find in Hallownest. He'd never seen it even after its reveal at the Pure Vessel's unofficial funeral, when the cloth was pulled away and it was laid bare for all of Hallownest to bear witness to. In a way, perhaps it was his own way of showing the White Lady he was grieving, too.

His wife, no doubt, had been shocked. His wife had assured him of its beauty and smiled. His wife had said good-bye and left. He'd never seen it a moment in his life--he hadn't been there since--but Gods, how he wanted to see it now.

_'Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal.'_

_They,_ he corrected himself again. And then he remembered, too: _That_ was what he had told the sculptor to inscribe. And that was what it would read forevermore.

And now, there was nothing left of anything. No children, no wife, no loyal knights or retainers, no Hallownest--only him and the hollow nest he left behind and that statue he never saw. How selfish he'd been back then. How insipid. How _stupid_. How...

 _How cruel_.

He fell apart all at once, an intricately woven tapestry made by a single long, cursed thread that ended up popping, pulled, coming undone by pressure and stress, and Wyrm was stuck in that mess, tangled and choking. 

For the first time since it all started, Wyrm stopped fighting against it. Instead, he clenched his eyes shut, and he curled in upon himself, and he cried and wailed and finally allowed himself to grieve as proper as a fallen king could grieve.

* * *

The city was crying.

The tears--for it could not be rain, not all the way down here under the shell of the earth--fell from the thousands of stalactites that hung firm above the city, dripping down steadily. Water slid over the windows, glistening and morose, and fell victim to gravity. The gutters must have been full by now, lined with salt and corrosion as it tried--and failed--to guide the overflowing water into the Royal Waterways.

The air here smelled like the sea, he'd been told.

It was to the sound of this distantly falling water that he awoke to. That, and the scent of the sea, and something else much more vile and rotten that festered beneath.

The Watcher's Spire was silent until it wasn't, and when it finally wasn't, it was filled with coughing. Lurien reached his hand up, pulled off his mask for the first time in the Gods only knew, and rolled over.

He fell down. Hard.

And still he coughed, hacking, gasping for air. He pushed himself to his knees, covering his mouth, felt his wings shivering beneath his cloak, and was very dearly tempted to pull that off, as well, if only to make it easier to breathe. It was a while before he was able to stabilize himself, though his wings continued to shudder as he lifted his head to address his surroundings.

And he froze.

"...Isaiah…"

His legs were weak. They trembled as he stood, and more than once, he almost fell, his only saving grace the stability of his resting plinth beneath his claws and the discordant flutter of his wings. When he ran out of room to lean upon, he was close enough to the bug to collapse anyway. He did, pressing his palm against Isaiah. His butler was cold.

"Isaiah," he said again. He tightened his grip around his butler's--his _friend's_ \--arm and gave them a gentle shake. Then harder. " _Isaiah._ Wake up. I'm awake. You don't have to wait anymore. Isai… ah."

...The rotten stench was coming from them. They'd been dead for a long time. There was nothing he could do for them.

Lurien stopped shaking them, but it didn't stop his hands from trembling. He took a slow, deep breath, letting it out with great hesitance, afraid he would lose himself if he didn't. Again, just to re-orient himself. And then he stood.

He had to… figure out what to do next. He had to figure out what this all meant, why he was awake, try to contact the other Dreamers to see if they were, too, find out if the infection was finally gone, figure out what that damn vessel _did, stop staring at Isaiah, they aren't going to wake up, their shell is empty._

Lurien cleared his throat, fretfully running his hand over his face as he turned away from them. He walked over to his telescope, stopping only to kneel down and recover his mask, to pause beside his final painting and run his claws over the oils. And he stayed there for a while, staring at the painting, tracing invisible brush strokes and leaving thin streaks of dust on his claws. The painting was old, the paint itself faded grossly on the canvas, but it was just as beautiful as the city he remembered loving.

Finally, he turned back to the telescope, settled himself down, and peered through it as he always had before. And what he saw was just another source of misery for his reanimated soul, a great many husks collapsed on the streets while a few of the stronger ones--the fresher ones, he reckoned--continued patrolling the streets down below, haltingly and haphazardly pausing and patrolling again. Lurien adjusted the telescope, practiced claws adjusting it from side to side, refocusing what became unfocused, carefully tuning the rollers for a few bittersweet moments before his chest lurched and he stopped.

His King was never particularly fond of Beeble's methods of dealing with the infection. Part of Lurien's job had been to monitor his work--ensure that Beeble didn't ever go too far. Too far was far, far more than the number of corpses that lined the street being piled high in the soul sanctum. Hundreds--if not thousands--of soulless husks whom Lurien had been unable to protect because he had been _sleeping_.

So that was the state of things. The City of Eves was becoming an empty shell full of corpses.

A small spat of petty anger flared suddenly in Lurien's chest, and he stood haughtily from his seat, cursing boldly when his abdomen struck his telescope's eyepiece. He pushed it away and turned (did not stumble, _turned_ ) on his heel, _striding_ to the elevator lever and pulling back on it as hard as he could.

 _Thank goodness it's still working,_ he thought, and a small piece of that anger subsided amicably.

Lurien returned shortly thereafter to the plinth he'd been resting upon not that long before, pressing his hands against the edge and pushing. He grunted, strained. It moved a little--not by much.

He gasped, pausing, leaning against it, and looked again toward his friend on the ground, breathing out a shaky laugh. "I've gone a bit out of shape, haven't I, Isaiah? I probably should have listened to you back then."

Isaiah didn't answer. Lurien could forgive them of their silence.

"I have a lot of work to do," he told them, chest heaving. "It may be a time before I return, but I'll…"

His voice faded away, either by uncertainty or fatigue, he didn't know.

After a few minutes of Lurien catching his breath, during which he heard the distinctive _clank_ of the elevator's full ascent, he pushed against the plinth further, grunting and groaning. Bit by bit, it eased itself open, until finally there was a gap large enough for the Watcher to rummage around in, breathing heavily the must of old paints and paper, hardened clay, and--

An umbrella.

He pulled it out carefully, acquainting himself once more to the weight that'd grown so foreign to him, gripping the handle under his claws. No holes, no tears--his body did a _fine_ job of protecting it from dust. The thought collected in the back of his throat as Lurien hoisted it under his arm, only to wither away to nothing as he turned to his closest friend. For a moment, he could say nothing, reality threatening to settle in and vanquish that angry spark for good.

"...I'll be back soon," he finally said. " _Soon_. Okay?"

The corpse lay on the ground, unspeaking, unhearing. Most of all, they were cold. Lurien grimaced--he didn't want to think about how long Isaiah had been laying there before he awoke, or if they'd been infected at any point during their promised vigil, or--

No. No, no, _no,_ he _wasn't_ going to think about that. Not right now--he needed to work. And figure out what the _hell_ was going on after that.

"...I love you," he said. "And I'll see you later. Okay?"

Lurien didn't expect an answer, and he didn't get one. It made it so much harder to leave than he imagined it would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, asking for names: What would you name Lurien's butler?  
> A friend: Uhh... Isaiah.  
> Me, still asking for names: Okay. What about this motherfucker? *shows Soul Master*  
> Another friend: Beeble.  
> Me, exasperated: I'm not calling him Beeble.  
> [20 minutes later]  
> Me: Okay fine, his name's Beeble, fucking funny name, you fucking fool, I love you.
> 
> Also, appreciate Wyrm having a growing moment.
> 
> In this house, we! Support! Queer! Platonic! Relationships! AAA! I'm so sorry, Lurien!


	4. These Were Not Thoughts Meant To Linger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyrm struggles to solidify his stance and primary motivation for pressing on. In the process, he also has some difficulty figuring out how to claw his way from the bottom of the basin.
> 
> Meanwhile, somewhere far above, the serenity of the Blue Lake is briefly broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chanting* No beta we die like the thousands of dead kids in the abyss

"Bring me the crawlid, please."

Wyrm's voice tilted with an exhausted reservation, cracking and unsteady. It echoed in his posture, his movement, the aversion of his gaze from the Kingsmould even as it stepped toward him with the prey latched in its claw. It was spoken in still more measure than he would allow mere words to express in the dimness of his kingslight, lingering like a dying candle.

He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there, miserable and _weeping_ like some common bug, but his head was pounding, throbbing against the forefront of his shell. He couldn't bring himself to open his eyes--for once, seeing the wall was almost preferable, a memorial to his solemn numbness. Gods, if only he'd been able to cling to that for a little longer, at the very least until he was out of this damn hole in the bottom of Hallownest. His kin were right underneath him, and he couldn't do anything even now to give himself or them any closure.

The crawler was deposited to his side with a dull thud. Wyrm didn't look at it, sucking in a sharp breath that stung in his stomach, pressing his palms against his eyes and _pressing down harder._ It didn't stop the wetness from dripping--if anything, it made it worse. Wyrm sobbed, his shoulders shaking.

"...What am I doing here?" he whispered, lifting his gaze to regard the molded knight. "What draws me here from my grave, wounded and bleeding though I may be? What is this, then, some joke? Do you know, molded knight?"

Of course, it didn't respond, standing stock still and stiff. It didn't even breathe, could be so easily mistaken for a statue--but then, the same sentiment had applied to the Pure Vessel as they grew, and now they were damned because of him. Damned, and mayhaps dead--and if they were dead, that damned memorial would be the sole public acknowledgement of their existence.

Something vile and sharp and feral twisted in his gut, and Wyrm looked away and hissed.

 _No_. This was not how the Pure Vessel would be remembered.

Not as an _it._

This was not how his _progeny_ would be remembered.

Not as a long list of _its._

Not if _he_ had anything to say about it.

And Gods, he had _so much_ to say about it.

Mind set and refocused, Wyrm bodily turned his attention to the crawler laid before him, hissing this time as the ache returned to his shell and the throbbing in his forehead. He reached out and grasped the crawler, inching it closer, rolling it over in his claws until he could find the place the Kingsmould struck the killing blow so he could begin to tear it apart.

It smelled equal parts rotten and savory despite its rawness, but Wyrm noticed something very quickly that made him briefly stop and reconsider. Orange clumps pressed against the shell and wedged between the flesh, contained within a membrane that felt like hardening jelly. Her touch spread even to down here, then, where the remnants of the void-touched ocean could awaken and drag Her down into its listless depths.

He was loathe to ponder too deeply the implications, though in his mind, they were blazingly clear. He needed desperately to check on the Pure Vessel now more than ever.

He tore through it anyway, grasping every little bit he could find and separating the infection from the meat, keeping a careful eye on the blobs. Interestingly, instead of imitating the lifeblood eggs scattered throughout Hallownest, they instead quickly shriveled, pulled into themselves and became next to nothing, not unlike a dying leaf.

(He briefly remembered Joni and her exile and grimaced. That was one thing he didn't particularly regret, at least.)

Wyrm settled himself, regarding the infection, momentarily deciding to take the meat and eat it.

...It didn't taste as awful as he'd have liked it to.

* * *

A brief heal aided by a somewhat-satisfied stomach healed a small portion of his injuries, replenished a touch of his vigor, and a fresh dressing of his wounds left him with a sigh of relief a few minutes before. But Wyrm stared upwards now, craning his neck to stare at the fossilized surface of the ancient basin, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to climb out with his own claws.

It was a wonder, really, that bugs were able to come here as easily as they did. He didn't remember there ever being a lift to ascend these tunnels--though in hindsight, he didn't remember the jagged bones that led to his kins’ grave, either. New developments--new problems, new issues, new questions of varying importance, the least being 'why' and the most being 'how'. The most pressing one on his mind at the moment was 'How do I get up there?'

The knight could reach, just barely--if needed be, Wyrm hadn't an issue clinging to its back. But it was a vessel made less for utility and more for combat, and as such, while its grasp on its weapon was solid and iron, its grip on the semi-smooth surface of the ancient basin would be less so. Wyrm had no intention to fall again--especially over such a great height, one that he might not be able to survive.

The Pale Being hummed, and despite the need to conserve his energy, he began to pace.

More often than not, Wyrm was a quiet breed, his inventive brooding more secluded to his mind. Such was the case over the passing few hours, as Wyrm paced the same few meters over and over, picking up fossils disguised as rocks, observing hidden stone barnacles, tracing his claws over hidden designs. He had the evolved crawlid's shell, he had what remained of his robes (none above the knee), he had the Kingsmould--and that may have been it. The only question was what he could use with these limited resources.

Wyrm paused in his pacing, knelt down beside the crawler, claws bending the joints of its meticulously evolved legs. He had an idea, but the execution left much to be determined, the potential for success even more to be desired.

Again, he had little intention of falling.

Still, something must be done to proceed.

So Wyrm went to work.

* * *

Quirrel remembered the Archives being different.

Once upon a time when he was a young grub, beginning his work in this once-familiar place, the hum of electricity was accompanied by a familiar chatter. Bugs translating papers and stone tablets into electrical records once shared their information with all the fervor of an artist boasting of their craft, endless streams of conversation that the young bug he used to be couldn't help but to listen into. Monomon was at the center of it, all those years ago, and she was at the center of it even now that the chatter was gone, replaced solely by the hum of machines.

Had it really been years?

Idly, Quirrel reached up--not for the first time since he came to Hallownest, but was the first time they found nothing. That's right. The mask was returned to her.

He really ought to get used to that.

His claws floundered for a moment before curling into a fist, and he sighed, staring bleakly across the surface of the lake, leaning forward against his knees.

He remembered Hallownest in its heyday, too--the lively bells and chatter in the stag stations, the hubbub of the crying city, the gossip of the mantis tribe and the deadly beasts in Deepnest, equal degrees spoken with disgust and respect. But that was then, and this was now--Hallownest was all but an ancient and old corpse destined to be forgotten. Whatever purpose Quirrel had, it was _technically_ fulfilled now, even if he hadn't seen it to completion with his own two eyes.

It still felt wrong, knowing what he knew now, seeing what he saw. Presenting the good madam's mask before her and unlocking that failsafe only for his little friend to turn and walk away.

Quirrel stayed for hours after that, waiting for their return with as much patience as a bug rapidly coming to feel his age could muster. Eventually he had to concede defeat, standing to his feet and leaving, though not without touring the archives a final time and discovering the presence of this lake. Not without saying good-bye to the lady who raised him.

It really would have been easier if the little one had finished their job for him. At least then, he wouldn't have had a body to walk away from. He'd have his closure.

But he could also understand their hesitancy, and as a result, he couldn't bring himself to feel angry about their departure. Shouldering the responsibility of this fallen kingdom was surely a difficult burden to bear, and although their ability with their nail spoke measures to self-taught experience despite their size, they still struck him as a child to some degree. Having that weight on their shoulders couldn't be easy.

But it made the idea of walking away from Hallownest that much harder. There were greener pastures beyond this desolate world, after all--and Quirrel in his age still found himself hungry to see it. Although technically his job here was done, and he had no need to remain, there was still a compulsion to remain.

Still--at least he was able to see this, in the end. The Blue Lake was a large body of clear and fresh water, fog catching the light and making it almost seem to shine. It was the brightest teal he'd ever seen in Hallownest, and it almost hurt his eyes to look at. Part of Quirrel wondered how high the water level used to be, if it climbed once all the way to the ceiling of this cave, filling the entirety of the cavern. How old Hallownest must have been if it were drained to such a level, enough to expose clean but empty shells and paraphernalia.

It was smaller than he thought it would be, too, considering the rain below fell down over most of the City of Eves. The academic majority of his mind reckoned that the curvature of the cavern the city rested in was curved just so that it would fall in perfect patterns.

Quirrel hummed, rubbing his chin. The City of Eves. That's what the popular name used to be before the lake began to drain and the residents of Hallownest unofficially renamed it to the City of Tears. Such a shame--he felt the name sounded too nice to be wasted.

A brief blunder of rapidly-approaching footsteps broke Quirrel away from his thoughts and into a sharp focus as he turned, hand moving reflexively to his nail. They fell hard--the figure in question stopped abruptly, hoisting what looked to be a shield on his arm. The bug lifted it into the air, pointing it straight at Quirrel, white eyes narrowed to slits.

"You," he said, voice firm and harsh. "You look like a sort that has been here a while. Are you aware of the existence of an arena in this place?"

Quirrel stared for a few brief, stunned moments before tilting his head, turning fully to face him. He scratched faintly at his forehead, humming, though his other hand remain rested against his nail as he considered his answer. "Well," he finally said with a soft shrug, "I suppose I _have_ been sitting here for a while, yes. I cannot deny that. If you don't mind my asking, what sort of arena is it that you seek?"

 _"Sitting?_ " The bug scoffed, upturning his head. "What good is _sitting_ in such a boring place?"

"What good is searching for a battle arena to risk chipping away at the only shell you have?" Quirrel bit back.

"So you _do_ know what I seek!"

Quirrel hesitated, hand reaching up again to tilt the madam's mask forward even just a little, finding nothing. He hid this gesture by scratching the top of his head, tilting it to the side as he considered the bug standing before him. If nothing else, he seemed rather confrontational--and _agitated,_ for lack of a better word. He couldn't help a soft chuckle, which caused the bug to hiss, straightening up. "What are you laughing about?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing." Quirrel shook his head, laughter dying away into a sigh. He gestured toward the bug--or rather, behind him. "It's really not too far off. There's an elevator just down yonder that goes down to the City of Eves. One of the stops is a straight path to the Colosseum of Fools--"

"An elevator? Pah." The bug scoffed, turning his head up at the very notion, the scathing tone in his voice punctuating itself very clearly. "A real warrior has no need for such _conveniences._ "

"Oh? And why is that, pray tell?" Quirrel could allow himself to smile at this exchange, crossing his arms and leaning to the side. If he didn't allow himself to find the humor in it, he'd probably be annoyed, and he really didn't feel up to igniting a fragile temper in this one.

After a moment of careful consideration, the blue bug grunted, shaking his head. "It's no wonder everyone here are such small weaklings," he mumbled. "Choosing convenience over hardening up one's shell through hard work and labor… pah."

Again, Quirrel found himself chuckling, shaking his head, much to the chagrin of this strange person. "I think it'd better as a fighter to save your energy until you need it to fight, don't you?"

"Unbelievable!" the shield-bearer exclaimed, throwing his empty arm up in the air as he turned to walk away. "That's it! If you will not point me in the direction I need, then I'll find it myself!"

"Good luck with that, my friend!" Quirrel called after cheerily, lifting his hand up to tilt--no, to shield the top of his face from the mist above him. "Until next we cross paths!"

"We will _not,_ squib! _"_ the shield-bearer spat back over his shoulder.

Quirrel waved after him as he left, for no other reason than his own entertainment. Once the bug was finally gone and out of sight, he chuckled, shifting his weight on his legs.

"Ah, my. That kind of attitude will get someone killed here."

Absentmindedly, he began reaching up a hand to adjust Monomon's mask before managing to catch himself this time with a firm shake of his head. Enough of that now--he never realized how often he actually did that until her mask was gone. Always it brought comfort with its presence, but now he was absent from it, and fully alone in this ghost of a kingdom.

Quirrel sighed, turning once again to regard the Blue Lake.

...It truly was beautiful, though. He wished the stranger could understand it.

* * *

It was a haphazard device, but considering the severely limited means he had to build something workable in the first place, Wyrm felt strangely proud of it.

Earnestly, it was amazing what the legs of a simple crawlid could do--the microscopic hooks that their legs had allowed them to cling to practically any surface with ease, letting them easily defy gravity in their listless patrol. These crawlers were of a different genus than the breed that lay closer to the surface, more touched by the influence of void, somehow more listless than any other Wyrm had ever seen. The retainers used to call them shadowlike creepers. Someone he once knew called them thoughtless.

 _(If the void's influence had made the crawlids here thoughtless_ , Wyrm had thought, a long, long time ago, _then surely…)_

The point being, this one had thousands of tiny legs just _perfect_ for climbing nearly any kind of surface--and with some fumbling and fidgeting with the molded knight's scythe, the empty shell could also be made into a climbing instrument of sorts, tied down in a clever and secure way by the sturdier bits of his robe. It left his attire in a further worse state of wear, ripped in discordant fashion and leaving over half of his top set of arms bare.

Gods, he must have looked awful. But at least he could probably get out now.

He ordered the Kingsmould to test it out first, ordered it to leap into the air and swing the curved edge of the sickle into the wall, clench to it as tight as it could. When the sickle snagged in the wall by the crawler's legs and the Kingsmould remained attached, hanging stiffly from it, Wyrm made his decision.

The knight came down and knelt, sickle in hand, and Wyrm climbed atop its back, clinging on tight. The metal was cold but the voidmatter was colder, and he flinched from the touch, clawtips humming restlessly with proximity. Worse still were the injuries of his thorax, itching and aching deep beneath the bandages, every sudden movement of the ascent sending trembling shocks of pain through Wyrm's body. It was by sheer force of will he was able to hold on as the Kingsmould wrestled its way slowly to the closest outcropping directly above them, and when they reached it, it was with a bodily leap toward the opposite side of the upward climbing tunnel.

Wyrm gasped, wheezed, choked--his chest was burning fiercely enough it bled into the corners of his vision, unsteadily wavering. Once it began to pass, he looked over toward his traveling companion. The Kingsmould stood beside him, stiff and stock-still. If it were proud of their shared, small achievement, it showed no indication.

He paused. The Pure Vessel never showed any indication, either. And yet…

Or maybe he was projecting the Pure Vessel onto it. Maybe he saw too much of them in it, in its posture, its movement, the armor and the void. All he knew was that if it took all the breath in the world, all the voice he had left in his days to fix even a crack of the damage he may have done to-- _t_ _hem_ , he would do so without a second thought.

"...Good job," Wyrm rasped, coughing. Even if it was a resource he needed at the moment, he felt obliged to say his part. Voice his appreciation.

Maybe he was too hopeful, but the knight, when he finally looked up again and pushed himself up to his feet, may have relaxed its posture just slightly.

* * *

At some point, they found paper.

The fallen king stared at this sign of life dubiously, kneeling down and picking it up carefully between his claws. In his faltering kingslight, the paper shone, white and thin, detailing some approximation of the ancient basin. He scratched idly at his bandages, narrowing his eyes as he straightened, murmuring quietly under his breath. "What is this, a map of some sort…?"

 _Of course it's a map,_ Wyrm quietly scolded. What else would it be?

And a relatively fresh one, at that--clean, white paper, coated in some waxy, waterproof material. Wyrm chanced to look up, spying another sheet hanging by the ledge of a narrow cavern a little higher up, and breathed a sigh. Curious as he was, he turned away, pointedly ignoring the aggravated keening in his chest as he returned to the Kingsmould.

"Well," he murmured. He wasn't sure if it was more to it or to himself at this point. "It seems that someone was here recently… even trespassed upon the palace grounds."

He stared down at the paper for a time more, distantly pondering the implications--could this mean that some piece of Hallownest survived, after all? Or perhaps his kingdom fell to scavengers and adventurers intrigued by the ruin? 

"I suppose I cannot blame them, whoever they may be," he concluded, folding the paper neatly in quarters before setting it safely within one of his few remaining pockets. "I hope whatever they may have come here for that they found it in the end. However empty Hallownest may be."

Someone he knew had told him--wisely, in hindsight--that the dream of a Wyrm was never to last. _Like it or not,_ he'd said, trailing ash-streaked clawtips over the fabric of stone, _the penultimate destiny of any civilization is to inevitably fall. No kingdom is eternal as it lives, but the footprint it leaves upon the lands will always remain. Dear Wyrm, at the very least, make peace with this fact. It will make it easier. Hallownest will not last._

It may not be as immortalized as he wished--not anymore. But at least it was eternal in the memory of some bug who still lived.

In some bittersweet way, maybe that was enough.

It was time to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing dialogue between characters. I've never been good at it. I'm so much more interested in writing prose.
> 
> In any case, Tiso is being difficult, Wyrm is finding his stubborn footing, and Quirrel is just straight-up vibing at this point, I guess. Pillbug dad isn't going to leave Hallownest until something regarding his little friend happens.
> 
> The worst part? It might never happen. But that's okay! Because something else will.
> 
> Does anybody have an idea as to who Wyrm's old friend might be? I'm earnestly curious who might end up getting it right.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed!!!


	5. Talking To Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyrm starts talking to a thoughtless being. It's debatable if it's because he actually thinks that it can understand him or if it's because he's lonely. But before that, be stumbles upon a bountiful wishing fountain, a sickening amalgamation of bugs, and a dead end. How's he going to proceed?

The fountain's water was still, but it wasn't festering with bacteria.

Wyrm marveled at this, briefly, and took a single step into the silent, still room before stopping. Equal parts confusion and dread welled up in the pit of his stomach, and though he failed to taste his own ichor at this point, something else threatened to bubble over instead.

He assumed this was a reasonable reaction to seeing the corpses of a few of his retainers slumped around the fountain, white robes still shockingly clean, though their eyes bled dried voidmatter.

(Bitterly, Wyrm recalled thinking that the ancient oil-touched sea never dried--apparently he was wrong.)

(There was a lot he was wrong about. It almost seemed to be a running theme.)

The voidmatter trailed down their faces like the memory of lingering tears, though realistically, its existence was solely there for lack of anywhere else to escape. Enough exposure to the void down here was enough to leave any bug’s carapice itching with the pressure, aching for the merciful release of million-year-old essence built up within the shell.

Wyrm knew that pressure very well by now--even he, Higher Being he was, resistant though he may be, carried it with him in his very own claws. It was only by the grace of his very own soul that he’d been able to combat its spread.

The other bugs of Hallownest, on the other hand--

Wyrm turned his head away from his retainers, bodily choosing to ignore them as best he could for the time being, lest he suffer the consequences once more. Instead, he turned his attention back to the fountain, stepping forward to examine the shimmering water that lay beneath.

The last he saw the fountain, it was running, filtering the water to keep it fresh. It was used as a tribute to the Pale King, wherein a bug could give all that they had to spare to be collected weekly by the retainers whose presence he was now in. Now it shimmered for an ultimately different reason, glimmering with thousands’ worth of the plentiful fossils Wyrm decided to use as currency a lifetime ago.

Carefully, he reached into the pool of water, withdrawing a five-piece. The water was frigid to the touch, and the metallic-stone surface of the geo was even colder, shimmering and reflecting his kingslight in eye-aching fashion. The fountain was so full of it that it covered the entire bottom, clogging up the water filter. It had to have been done recently--he wondered if it was the work of the same bug whose map he found.

Perhaps not. Beyond his kingdom, geo was not an abundant economy. More likely, these were the remnants of his people, tributes blindly given in the hopes that the Pale King would return and save them from Her devastation.

Wyrm shook his head, tossing the geo listlessly back into the water. It landed with a quiet splash, a _plop,_ the water rippling outward and disturbing the tranquility of what remained.

How did that saying go? ‘A captain always goes down with their ship?’

What a _‘captain’_ he ended up being.

With a sigh, Wyrm unwrapped his bandages, climbing to sit on the edge of the fountain. He was the self-exiled king, after all. He had every right to entitle himself to defiling his own image.

And what better way to do that than by cleaning his injuries?

* * *

The climb was still difficult, though with time, it became moderately easier. The sudden movements as the Kingsmould moved still caused massive waves of pain to stumble across Wyrm’s carapace, but by now, he was beginning to get used to it. It probably wasn’t a good thing, but it was leagues better than the alternative of doing nothing.

Occasionally when they crossed paths with a creeper, Wyrm debated on pausing to indulge himself in a meal of sorts. When they were close enough to the tram station, though, he decided it a necessity--there was no telling what state the City of Eves was in, whether it was in a state of disrepair or if life still beat someplace within its heart. And as such, there was no guarantee that there would be anything to eat.

And if it _were,_ somehow, still abuzz with activity--

Wyrm stifled a choked bout of laughter and almost choked in the process. Somehow, the mental image of himself walking into the bustling city streets, tattered and tattooed with scarring tissue, tickled him. He could only imagine the shocked horror on their faces as a God clawed his way out of hell--oh, how the mighty have fallen, indeed! And wouldn’t he deserve it if they shunned him?

And if they never remembered him, perhaps that would be for the better.

The crawler’s meat was fairly filling, the infection following the same pattern as the one before. It shriveled up to essentially nothing. What he didn’t eat, he set into a bag fashioned out of a sizable piece of his robe. If it were already shorn and shredded to pieces, there was no sense in preserving the clothing--they were rags at this point, decorating his figure solely for the purpose of easier transportation.

Scornfully, he remembered that this wasn’t his favorite robe anyway.

Wyrm and molded knight climbed the last ascent to the decrepit tram station. The light that shone down from the station wrapped around him with blessing, and the air was so much less dense, as well, the oppressive weight of the earth pressing its weight lighter here. Wyrm straightened himself, quietly adjusting his bandages with fretful claws, looking at the tram.

Or rather, the _absence_ of the tram.

The tramways were decommissioned for good reason, and from Wyrm’s recollection, the tram had remained stationary in the ancient basin since his self-imposed exile into death. He expected it to stand there now as a metal husk, dark and brooding, circuitry perhaps too damaged by rot to properly function. Not that he was planning on using it at all--not unless the way to the city was somehow barred--but his surprise came from the fact that the podium for the tram pass was active and glowing.

A podium that, when Wyrm drew near, gave a soft and gentle hum, the slot expectantly awaiting the tram pass.

Wyrm fumbled with his robes, fidgeted for a time, patting down his remaining pockets and grunting when he found nothing to aid him. No matter. If he were desperate enough to use the tram, he could simply see about rewiring the circuitry and recalling the tram to this location. For now, he had no need to go to either Deepnest or to the edge of the kingdom where his former shell molted like snow.

The Pale Being pressed his palm against the card reader, staring up toward the ceiling, eyes guided along the rail toward the door that led to Deepnest. His secondary set of arms curled loosely around his shell, one claw scraping against the other, a nagging anxiety seeping into his stomach with alarming suddenness.

He was so worried this whole time about the state of the Pure Vessel that he forgot about _Hornet._

 _How_ could he have forgotten about Hornet? It wasn't even that he didn't care for the little spitfire, though the time he allowed her was brief. Grief had coiled so firmly and tightly in his chest, ached at the joints of his claws and begged the relief of death--all those thousands of other bodies buried beneath the earth, yet he somehow forgot about the _one_ who wasn't.

Wyrm tapped his clawtips against the card reader, grumbling nonsense beneath his breath. Hornet would have survived when the infection was at its height--the blood of spiders was a powerful sort, and aside from that, she had the blood of a God to act as protection. He remembered her to be a fierce young warrior, too, wielding her needle and the thread of her string with a well-practiced and deadly precision. One had to be well-practiced and deadly to survive the dark and dangers of Deepnest.

He admired that, really. Not just in Hornet, but in her mother and her people.

But times changed, and hunting dirtcarvers and garpedes was nothing when everything fell victim to the Radiance's light and everything from every direction came at you all at once. Even if he'd assured Hornet's mother until her Dreaming that he would ensure her continued training (preparation for the worst-case scenario), preparation could only do so much in the way of protection.

Would she still have remained in Deepnest after all that time? Would she have turned her back on her home and left?

 _Could_ she even be alive?

Wyrm didn’t know, and he didn’t want to risk wasting his precious damn soul on his foresight right now. At the very least, not until he assured himself some way forward.

Wyrm straightened himself up, stumbled, and fell. After a few moments of recollecting himself, he tried again with much greater success. His limbs continued to tremble regardless, equal parts by fatigue and shaky nerves.

The Kingsmould stood by, stoic and still, as Wyrm picked up his cloth-wrapped meat and clenched it loosely in his claws. It regarded him with empty white eyes, pale and unperceivable, whatever thoughts it could have hidden beneath its veil of indifference.

"Let us ascend," Wyrm stated, gesturing toward the opening of the ceiling.

The knight didn't respond, but it began moving regardless.

* * *

The silence was cozy, until it was not. It was cozy in the way that a quiet and cold room with nothing much else to do but wrap up in a blanket was cozy, if that room had a few corpses littered here and there and in the corner that still festered. But ultimately it was a familiar sight by now, so for all intents and purposes, cozy was a fair word.

At least until the blanket began to tickle a little too much, and it was a little uncomfortable. And then it began to tickle more and more the longer you sat there. It tickled the shell in many many places now, and when you finally looked down to see why, you noticed that it wasn't a blanket at all, but rather some massive pest with millions of legs trying to dig deep into your shell.

That's what Wyrm felt about the noises as he approached the bridge at least, hearing the noise of something scuttling and squirming not too far beneath him. He didn't need to approach the edge to see that the bridge was out, but he did all the same. The noises were at their peak here. He looked down.

"...Ah."

His voice oozed with a tone of dread as he appraised this… nightmarish scene, kingslight illuminating thousands of squirming bugs beneath him. Young garpedes--a lot of them, perhaps seven clusters. They were an amalgamation concocted by some cruel, carnivorous entity, gnashing mandibles turned hungrily toward the light he provided, snapping and twisting. It was impossible to tell where one creature ended and another began, only that it was large and seemingly bottomless and if he tried to procede ahead, he would soon find out what happened when a mortal bug ate a God. The creatures writhed and chittered, dozens of pairs of beady eyes glistening, and it hurt his head to stare.

He stared anyway. He didn't know how long he stared. Sometime between him hearing the sounds and peering out from where the bridge once stood, he must have held his breath. Wyrm breathed in, slow and deep, the effort leaving his chest with a painful ache. With it left at least some portion of dread, the mystery behind the noises drawn to a close. Wyrm's frigid claws wrapped around his arms, secondary set curling around his twisting stomach--he could feel the pressure in his forearms but not in his clawtips. Quietly and with a necessary flourish, he turned his back to the pit of creatures and left them, shedding the blanket, though his shell itched and tingled no less.

"Back to the tram," he uttered to the Kingsmould as he passed.

It stood to attention and diligently moved to follow, stepping in stride with his footsteps. It didn't say anything. Its armor clattered. The squirming sounds were blissfully vanishing behind them. It didn't say anything.

"We are heading to Deepnest," Wyrm answered to the growing silence.

It didn't say anything.

* * *

Sitting down was a relief on his legs. Although it was easier to walk and the disused aching of his joints straightened themselves out like the paper map in his robe, his feet were exhausted from all of the walking, and he was tired. A peculiar contentedness met him as he rested himself, while his claws scrambled to find purchase so he could work. It was perfect--or it _would_ be.

His claws struggled to pry open the control panel, shaking and fumbling and slipping on the gap as he tried and failed to pry it open. Part of the difficulty may have been from the slight rust that was marred upon it--the other might have been from the growing paralysis of his clawtips.

"I used to have enough soul within my body to contend the voidmatter infection," he murmured to no one in particular. "Void and soul are, at their very core, fundamentally opposed. Yet harnessing the void was necessary for understanding it. Although I fear, in spite of my efforts, that I still fail to comprehend its… do not look at me like that."

The Kingsmould hadn't been looking at him in any particular way other than how a judgemental brick wall with eyes would, but it turned its head away regardless, which Wyrm appreciated. Still, Wyrm struggled to undo the safety latches fully, digging his claws as best he could between the cracks and pulling hard enough that he was surprised his shell didn't splinter any further.

His claws slipped, and he fell with a grunt of aggravation, backside hitting the frigid ground. In his imagination, the molded knight might have tensed in an attempt to stave off some silent laughter.

...His sanity was slipping, wasn't it?

Wyrm ran a hand over his face with a quiet groan. His head was still swimming with the garpede horde, twisting his stomach into uncomfortable knots. For a moment, he traced an imaginary crack on his face. 

Wyrm straightened up again, shaking his head and resuming his work. "In any case, I appear to have begun to lose feeling in the tips of my claws. This is a symptom of my tampering with the void--which you are made of--"(He tilted his head toward the Kingsmould here)"--that lies within the Abyss."

He paused, a distant grieving echo passing over his heart. He let it sit for a minute without thinking too deeply. "...So this may take a while," he added, quieter. "It will be easier once I open this panel. Please be patient."

Finally, with miniscule cracks forming at the tips of his uncoordinated claws, Wyrm managed to pry the panel away, brushing against aggravated and raw rust. He grimaced as he peered within, tapping his knuckle against a spat of fungi and dimly imagining its squelch. It looked like plant rot and smelt like the fungal wastes, musty and clouded with too many spores for most bugs to think clearly. Touching it made him shudder with disgust, and it was lined throughout the entirety of the inner workings--it was a miracle it was still (apparently) operational at all.

"...There is a breed of parasitic fungi that exists far beyond the reaches of Hallownest," Wyrm murmured, setting to work on the wires, humming with electricity. "Far, far beyond the howling wastes, even. It exists within places of tall and vast plantlife, the likes of which my Root can only dream. Spores attach themselves to ants on patrol and leech into their mind, transforming them into shambling husks whose only goal is to aid the fungi's growth."

"Once the fungal growth had reached maturity, the infected ant climbs upon a plant and hangs itself from a twig, allowing the fungus to spread its spores to any ant that happens to be unlucky enough to be around. Kingdoms of ants, I have seen… destroyed by such matters."

He worked the wires, the electrical thrumming of the contraption warning him against any unwise movement, carefully unraveling what he remembered he needed and re-arranging the strands, akin to the tapestry of a disorganized web. The silence hung in the air between them, leaving Wyrm to work in quiet focus, claws shaking as they refused to cooperate with his body.

...There was a parallel in there somewhere. A fungus that controlled the mind of a bug to ensure its own safety. A God who controlled the minds of Her followers to assure Her worship and subsequent survival. The frantic efforts of the colonies to prevent their inevitable downfall. The way some succeeded--the way many didn't.

"...I thought it was a fungus at first," he admitted. "Before my foresight made me aware otherwise. Do you know of the infection, moulded knight? The one that brought my Hallownest to its knees, and likely brought it to its downfall?"

He stared at the knight now, watching him impassively, a half-alive statue standing with emotionless regard before the former king of the once-glorious civilization that was Hallownest. There was no awe in its standing, no intrigue to hear tales regaled from beyond imagining, no desire to hear any more of his voice. It was a cold, cold indifference, one that could have been steeped in hate, well-fermented in oil and fire, and left out to dry for many, many years until it had the bland texture of mummified jerky. If he didn't know any better, he might have _called_ it hate.

...He'd been wrong before, of course. It could be that it felt, and that it hated, and it was only the restrictive pale shell that kept it from carving Wyrm's godly form down like a slab of meat.

"...In any case, there's a parallel there somewhere," he concluded, turning his attention back toward the electrical panel.

Some digit of his must have slipped, striking a wayward wire. The spark was sharp, sending an unwelcome jolt through his body, tingling and painful through the growing numbness--Wyrm pulled back again, light sputtering briefly. His hemolymph roiled inside of his being, shuddered with the ebbing current--he waited for the internal pressure to subside before moving forward again, assuring himself to be… more focused about this.

Eventually, with a resounding click and another spark of electricity, he heard it groan to life. Wyrm reflexively pulled away from the heat, dreading the touch of white-hot sparks against his void-scarred claws, stepping hastily to his feet. His limbs were sore, legs aching and tired, and he leaned against the apparatus to combat this issue, rubbing his arms to work away the tight tingling beneath his shell.

Somewhere in the distance, the tramway was en route--from the sounds of it, it was coming from Deepnest. Wyrm sighed, burying his face in his arms, body sagging. "It appears the tramway is still functional," he murmured to the thoughtless-maybe-not-thoughtless being. "What a relief."

His stomach twisted as the ground beneath him shook, and with a sudden realization, he lifted his head, looking over toward the bundle of raw meat not too far away. Aching want curled in the back of his mouth, stomach twisting with the apparent emptiness it was filled with.

"...I've been feeling unwell for a time now," he said. "At first, I assumed it was the grisly images I've been bearing witness to, but now I am reconsidering. Perhaps it is hunger instead?"

He didn't expect an answer from the Kingsmould, but he did move to pick up the bundle, hooking the sickle-like claw beneath the knot and hoisting it up. It was a paltry amount, all things considered, but Wyrm had never been a particularly gluttonous or fussy eater, all things considered. It'd still be more appetizing if it were roasted over a fire at the very least, but kindling was all but impossible to come by, and what _was_ here would be laden with damp and stained with void.

His other claw moved to nudge the cloth aside, and he peered within it as the massive metal doors opened and the tram rattled its way over. Wyrm winced at the noise, the unoiled and rusted hinges grinding horribly together, the mechanisms of its rusted gears quiet by comparison.

When it finally stopped, Wyrm turned his head toward the Kingsmould, the doors whispering open. "Come now," he said, taking a few steps toward the tram. The golden lights flickered on--a welcoming, warm light much softer than Her wrath just a few feet to the side.

Not in front of him, though, which was… strange, to say the least. Wyrm looked.

And he stopped dead in his tracks.

Far taller than him--yet far smaller than his Root--a bug that he hadn't expected to see so soon loomed him, clenching a large and hefty needle to her side. Her other arms crossed over the breadth of her well-fed body, shell glistening and hardened with scars from countless prior battles. And she stood between him and the tram, a blast from the past that he wasn't sure if he welcomed or dreaded or both.

Even though he couldn't see her face behind her mask, the beast was surely glowering. He could almost sense the explosive energy radiating off of her, fire centimeters from lighting the fuse. His kingslight sputtered.

"...Herrah," he greeted, stiffly.

"Hello, _cringer._ Glad to see that you've seen better days. Where is our daughter?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waggles fingers* Woo! Next chapter features Dialogue Time! My faaaavorite... (sarcasm)
> 
> Fun fact, folks: That fungus that Wyrm was talking about? Yeah, that ACTUALLY exists. It's a terrifying read, a horror story all it's own. Spine-chilling, in my opinion.
> 
> Chapters are probably going to slow down from here on out, just a fair warning. I work on them when I'm bored and when I feel a little inspired, so writing isn't really my main project at the moment.


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